Presented by College of Staten Island/CUNY, Wagner College, St. John’s University Staten Island
Created by the College of Staten Island/CUNY (CSI), St. John’s University/ Staten Island campus (SJU), Wagner College (WC), and four local public high schools, the 30,000 Degrees anchor initiative has worked over the past five years to align resources, their unique identities, assets and networks to increase the number of college graduates with a bachelor’s degree or higher from Staten Island by 30,000 by the year 2025. As higher education institutions around the nation confront the impacts of systemic racism, the initiatives undertaken by CSI, SJU & WC draw strength and forge new directions from the anti-racist commitments of the respective institutions. In doing so, 30,000 Degrees seeks and embraces new metrics for success through an innovative partnership with DePass Academic Consulting. All too often in the higher education and non-profit sector we pursue interventions based on deficit-based models, often lacking adequate evaluation and awareness of our success. There are long-term quantitative and qualitative measures that are not determinable for several years.
- What are the early and intermediate questions that can be asked to determine accomplishment of benchmarks that predict longer term success?
- How do we interject asset-based theoretical frameworks like Tara Yosso’s Community Cultural Wealth model to challenge the way we currently track and evaluate equity gaps in access and completion?
Through these frames and appropriate measures for evaluation, opportunities emerge as we scope prospects for external funding. In this workshop, participants will learn about the alternative measures of student success demanded by research sponsors. Together, through asset-based analysis we will discuss new ideas that optimize quantitative and qualitative data collection, and answer increasingly urgent demands for anti-racist reform for student success.